When Rejection Makes Us Young Again

For the writers among us who want to be published (and for everyone who has ever been spurned, or loved):

A request for a full manuscript offers the same giddy anticipation of Christmas morning—a package waiting to be opened. Will it contain coal, poo, or something shiny? It is hovering, an energy waiting to be born. A stone on a hillside waiting to be pushed. A request feels like the lurch of sighting the admired boy in the lunch line, seeing oneself in window glass and wondering "Am I pretty today?" And then he turns to look at you.

The loveliness of that request, that look, can carry one through the day, like those lazy afternoons in high school when the boys streamed out across the playing fields and the sun fell low. There's a crispness in the air and everything is possible and melodious.

It's all longing, and all your youth is longing.

Then the rejection, sudden, which feels inevitable when it arrives. Always, there's a heat within it. It feels like a slap, but one devoid of any true anger and love. It's a slap that shouldn't sting, but it does—every time. There is an immediate urge to cover the screen or the paper with your arms, and you wish that they were swan's wings. Your heart is beating in your face.

The sting fades faster each time, but it's still a sting. Suddenly you don't want to look your children in the eyes. The day is beautiful, but you feel a bit faint and lifeless, like someone abandoned you at the dance. All that possibility. The lovely things that might have come to pass. Is there a fine place to hide?

You remember what the boy said. He is your oldest son. He reads everything.

He says: "When is your book going to be published?"

"Not yet," you say. "Not yet."

"Well, you'd better be writing the next one in the trilogy. You'd better start tonight."

"Okay."

He turns in the doorway and adds, "I don't want you to write the next one. I need you to write it."

Your arms feel like the wings of birds at your side, this time not for shame.

The longing never goes. You are young, and want everything. People will say "no," and you still want. You have the recklessness of the toddler who smacks his head on the stairs in his efforts to climb. You continue to pet the dog that snaps at you.

Fool child, who keeps climbing trees and falling out, falling with tarry hands and brambles in your hair and the taste of the moon. Good for you. Someone should still be climbing trees on this earth.

Hark! Hark! I Have Free ARCs!

Ok, Book Sluts! I have now officially (and oh-so-randomly) chosen winners! I was going to choose two but I am too much of a softie so I chose THREE. The post office needs the money, right? Here they are:

Beverly Diehl:
Born Wicked
My Family for the War

Kathy Coleman:
Grave Mercy
The Fine Art of Truth of Dare

Brooke:
Bloodrose
Harbinger

I will contact you all personally to let you know. Congratulations! For those of you who didn't win, don't despair: There will be more giveaways just like this. Come back again, fair book sluts. Giving away books warms the cockles of my heart, and also my duodenum.

Please review and let us know how you enjoyed these titles!

_________________

Let's not meddle around here. You know what you want, and why you are here. Free books!

YOU ARE AN ADDICT.

But that's OK, because I like to feed your addiction.

Better yet, these YA books are unpublished and as yet untouched by human hands! Except mine. I groped them a little bit. (But you would too, if you came across a book called BORN WICKED. And that woman on BLOODROSE looks like she don't wear nothing under her clothes. Just saying. Damn it, did I learn nothing from NYC's Slutwalk '11?)

If you get them you can gloat and think something along the lines of the sign I once saw in a Brooklyn storefront: OUR STUFF IS CHEAPER THAN IF IT FELL OFF THE BACK OF A TRUCK.

So are these books.

The rules are simple for this giveaway:
1. Leave me a comment with a way to contact you should you win (if certain titles appeal to you, say so!)
2. Follow my blog
3. Tweet at least once about this giveaway, and please tag me @feralpony so I see it
4. If you don't tweet do something else nice, like help a young lady across the street without fondling her just because she's dressed like a slut.

I will pick 2 winners soonish...in a couple of days. Good luck!

Cate Cahill and her sisters are witches! If their secret is discovered by the priests of the Brotherhood,
it will mean an asylum, a prison ship—or an early grave.

See the blood drizzling from the "O"? Yeekers! There is a wolf, too.

A 17-year-old fleeing from an arranged marriage will be trained as an assassin...and a handmaiden to Death.

Plagued by waking visions and nightmares, her only comfort the bones of dead animals, sixteen-year-old Faye thinks she's going crazy. [These books sound awesome; why am I giving them away? I am a dope.]

Funny kissy cute!

At the start of WWII, Franziska is torn from her family to escape the Nazis via the kindertransport train. Being German in London and piecing together a new life isn't easy.

Awesome-Sausage Blog Award!

 So sorry. There are not many sausages here, only sauce. But if I had the time there would have been a lot of damned sausages raining down!  I have enclosed one sausage at the end.

I am terribly belated in giving out the award given to me by the awesome and inspired Anita Howard of a Still and Quiet Madness. Thank you, Anita, for my awesomesauce! Without further adieu, I am going to pour a big vat of awesomesauce down the neck of....

...Mary Frame, aka Marewulf, of It's All Fun and Games Until Someone Gets an Agent. Proud member of the #goatposse on Twitter, and now bedecked with sauce.

Rules:

1. Thank and link to the person who gave me this fabulous piece of work. I did that!

2. Pay it forward to no more than one person per month. Elaborate why said person is deserving of said award. The month is almost over so I'm getting this one in under the wire! Mary is swell and clever and writes a wonderfully helpful & smart blog, so we lurves her. Do you not see the people stalking her in the photo above? We like her! So do the stalkers!

3. Answer the following questions:

- What is your favorite song currently playing on your iPod, CD player, etc.?
Low's album "C'mon"

- If we peek into your Internet history, what would we find?
How long should a humor memoir be?
Light sensitivity
Brain tumor
Time between dinosaurs and now 
Personality disintegration
Station Liquors Mamaroneck
Allergy to fluorescent lights 
Boom!
Cell phone cancer risk

-And lastly, what is your all-time favorite movie that you watch over and over again?
Wizard of Oz, Star Wars, shit like that

-And here's nice big photo of The Sauce so that Mary can grab it and post it on her bloggeroo:

Awesome-Sausage! Tastier and less vegetarian. Porky. Greasy. Bad for you.

If it scares you, if it causes you doubt, do it immediately

Hey Slapass, What Are You Supposed to Be Doing Right Now? Taint This.

Hey fathead!

What are you doing here, anyway? Are you malingering, procrastinating, wasting your precious gifts, face deep in a laptop when you could be face deep in the lap of a fine young man or woman, ignoring your garden, ignoring your children, ignoring that strange man at the front door with the funny tic in his eye and the metallic smile, wishing you were somewhere else, wishing you could run off and join the circus, wishing that the world would stop and grant you a few more hours, biding your time until the muse comes up and bites you on the perineum, wasting your time until the oceans rise and wash over you and your uncompleted manuscripts?

Go on, get outta here! If I catch you on Twitter later this evening, there will be hell to pay, I assure you.

Are you still here? Do I have to take the switch to you?

Go away. Your naughtiness will be recorded in the annals for all to read and you will be mocked and people will throw potatoes at your head. And maybe bricks and nails.

I'm getting really angry now.

Go and make beautiful art, muttonheaded buffoon! The world is mooning over you, prematurely. The celebrity rags have already prepared their articles.

I am going to get on a plane now and whup the daylights out of your porkchop ass. Get ready, dinkums. When I arrive, I expect to see a first draft. Or hear your fine composition on the peee-a-no. Or taste your cake baked in the shape of the state of Texas. Or see the tree that you have carved into a fine replica of Abraham Lincoln. Or pet the little knitted Zombunny that you have stitched in your spare time.

Go now and do what you are meant to do.    

A La Cart!

As a longtime observer of shopping carts in the wild, I was intrigued to discover an influx of foreign carts into our neighborhood. Suspecting that these carts were here not to mix and mingle and learn English, but were bent on bad business, I faithfully recorded their secretive plans and movements and had their comments translated (at considerable personal expense). The startling results reveal rich cultural differences between American and foreign carts. No plots were revealed.

Oh, vous délicieux phallique jaune objet. Je suis violant vous maintenant ! Oui, me violer vous pensez-vous ? Je suis un panier d'achat et suis très amoureux. Va-va-va-voom ! N'est-ce pas?

(Oh, you delicious phallic yellow object. I am raping you now! Yes, do you feel me raping you? I am a shopping cart, and am very amorous. Va-va-va-voom! N'est-ce pas?)

Ich bin Vizened und alt, und Sie werden nicht löschen Sie mich aus diesem Pol. Nein! Nehmen Sie die Hände weg meine Gestricken Kleider! Ich habe Stiefeln im Innern von Mein selbst, und Wille verwenden es, um Ze Sheeet von Ihnen!

(I am vizened and old, and you will not remove me from this pole. Nein! Take hands off my crocheted garments! I have jackboot in interior of mein self, and will use it to kick ze sheeet out of you!)

Gehen Sie weg!

(Go avay!)

Soy un tonto baile. Voy a Remolino y Molinete y mostrar mi tren de aterrizaje a los chicos, y voy a vestir un tutú rosado. Me deja en el Salón de baile!

(I am a fool for the dance. I am to whirl, and twirl, and show my undercarriage to the boys, and I will wear a pink tutu. Show me into the hall where the dancing takes place!)

Yo, man. Pass me een rook. Een rook. Ja. Ik had veel te veel Miller Lites. Fuck. Ik ga te kotsen.

(Yo, man. Pass me a smoke. A smoke. Yeah. I had way too many Miller Lites. Fuck. I'm going to puke.)

Prayer for the Fallen

Here is what happened, then. Some children in a nearby school on that day had run from the blast, herded by their teachers. When asked later, several of the children said that the birds were on fire. Rumors among the children gained courage, as if the children expected to be told that they were correct, that they had divine imaginations. When told, no, your birds are not birds, some of them might have secretly concocted further strange and magical things made of wings and paper and fire. Monsters of air, ghosts of light and pressed metal. Anything with teeth and a heart could not live. I will make it on paper, the children said, and my fat yellow sun in the corner of the sheet will stay faceless.

    

But these were not birds, nor conglomerations of paper, steel, glass, bent at rigid constructions that defy the edgeless human form. They were people. They were men and women, clothes flaring out like vain, unfamiliar parachutes.

 

What happens at the moment of leaping? Can you still believe that everything happens in its proper time and place, and that time has brought you here to this conclusion? Do you curse the light? Or do you fall thankful for the light you have been granted all these days?

And those on the stairwells, in darkness, falling. And those on the planes in the bright blue Tuesday sky. The papers rained down like shorn birds deep into Brooklyn-calendars, promises, names, remnants. I touched the railings of my stoop and my fingers were printed with the dust of the dead. I had walked for miles in shoes long since discarded. I had seen the white flags shaken from the burning girders. I should never regret my life.

I want to think that they did not ask for mercy, but found something saved from bright days long ago. A day picking pears, stung by an errant bee that fed on the sweet pulp. A whistle across the fields, and the whisking tail of a dog at the door. Stumbling home barefoot that night drunk and in love. A newborn placed on your chest, its mouth and hands seeking, your hair slicked with sweat. A bowled and ancient sky by a lake, and the sound of a guitar, and laughter. Much beyond anything, love. You flew, you flew, you were born.

Remember us and all fine things and all good people who do so honor the dead.

    

9/11/11